The World Snooker Tour rolled into Belfast last week off the back of the biggest ever crowd at a live match, culminating in Mark Allen's victory last night.
Earlier this month, 9,000 people packed into the Hong Kong Coliseum to see Ronnie O'Sullivan defeat Marco Fu in the final of the Hong Kong Masters. The previous record crowd stood at around 3,000, also in Hong Kong in 2017, while that number in Britain is around 2,500 for the Masters in London.
Back to Europe, and the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, where just over a thousand paid in to see the final yesterday. This is the seventh year in a row that the tournament has been included on the tour, although the 2020 event did take place in Milton Keynes owing to the pandemic.
Professional snooker also visited the city in the mid-2000s for three years. The tournament in Belfast is a favourite amongst players on the tour, but what are the chances of an event coming south again in the future?
The last event in the Republic was in 2013, when the Tour Championship Grand Final came to the Bailey Allen in Galway.
Before that, professional tournaments here visited various venues across the country, from the Helix at DCU to the Citywest Hotel and, perhaps the most celebrated of them all, at Goffs, where the Irish Masters was staged for over 20 years.
The modern WST events - with 128-players heading to the venue and the need for a minimum three-table set-up - mean that the county Kildare venue wouldn't realistically be able to host a tournament nowadays.
With Asia able to provide massive audiences and with competition from elsewhere in Europe - Germany, Gibraltar, Malta, Latvia and Turkey have all hosted events in recent years - how likely are we to see an event elsewhere on the island over the coming years?
"I live in Dublin, and I was blown away with how big snooker was in the Republic," 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy tells RTÉ Sport.
"I wasn't really ready for that. I walk to my club on St Stephen's Green and people would be shouting at me asking when we would get a tournament in the Republic.
"The game is very popular on this island and it's fantastic that we have this event. It'd be fabulous to have an event in the Republic again.
"Goffs is always trotted out as the place to go, but that wouldn't work with a full-field event. I'm told the desire is there to have an event, and certainly the passion from the public is there.
"We've been to other countries where they don't love snooker as much as the Irish do. It'd be lovely to think that in the not too distant future we could have snooker back in the Republic."
Some have made the argument that a player is needed to drum up the support needed to see an event staged in the south.
When Goffs hosted the Irish Masters, we were in the era of Alex Higgins, Dennis Taylor and Patsy Fagan.
That was followed by Ken Doherty's World Championship triumph in 1997, which was massive for the game here. But there were other Irish players who were pushing him all the way; the likes of Fergal O'Brien, Michael Judge, Joe Swail and Patrick Wallace, amongst others.
While Northern Ireland has always produced top-16 players, from Higgins through Taylor and on to current star Mark Allen, the Republic's talent line has somewhat dried up.
Twenty-five years after Doherty's greatest hour at the Crucible Theatre, he's still on tour, battling with O'Brien and Judge to be the highest ranked Irish player. The next great player never arrived, with the brightest star in the interim years - Kilkenny's Davy Morris - managing a career high ranking of 51.
Cork's Aaron Hill is leading the latest group of players who are trying to make the breakthrough, and, still only 20 years old, he has shown promise with his victory over Ronnie O'Sullivan two years ago.
Aaron Hill 'buzzing' for first appearance at a World Snooker Tour event in Ireland
For Murphy, it's not a case of trying to pin all the pressure on one or two players, and he suggests that a tournament could happen here regardless of the career path of Hill, or his fellow Corkman Ross Bulman, who is battling to try to get back on the tour.
"That's what people say, but I'm not sure how much truth is in that," he says of the idea that a tournament won't return to Ireland until we've a player in the top-16.
"Germany doesn't have any top players, but snooker is alive and well there. China is the example of a place where success has led to growth.
"But the whole island has produced many top players, household names over the years, from the North and the Republic. Down in Cork, Aaron Hill has a very big future ahead of him if he stays on the straight and narrow.
"He's shown already that he's not frightened to beat the big players. We saw the opening of the new SBI [Snooker and Billiards Ireland] headquarters, academy and centre of excellence in Carlow last week with Ken Doherty playing a lot of young players.
"It was nice to see but we're a few years behind the Chinese."
Ken Doherty looking to spark into form after slow start to new season
Tournaments in Ireland weren't always ranking events. In fact it would take from the mid-1970s, when the Irish Masters was first played as an invitational, until 2003 for the tournament to be given ranking status.
Seniors Tour events have been staged at Goffs in recent years, and there is undoubtedly a nostalgia for a certain era of the game, with the likes of Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor, Jimmy White and the late Willie Thorne drawing the crowds to the Kildare venue.
"Goffs is very special and we need a tournament," Doherty said.
"If you had it the crowds would come out, just like they do here. They're starved of it now in Ireland. We had the Irish Masters and it was always packed. Even when we have the seniors there we have a great crowd.
"If we had the top players there, even for an invitational event to start off, it would be a great success.
"We just need a great sponsor."
These sentiments are echoed by Doherty's fellow Dubliner and former world number nine Fergal O'Brien.
"I definitely think there's an interest in it, snooker is still very popular," he said.
"There's definitely room for a tournament in Dublin, maybe a few months apart [from Belfast]. I don't see anyone not going to the one in Belfast because they were at the one in Dublin.
"Far from it. They're more likely to do both and take a week off and go to both. The interest is there. You need TV, you need a sponsor, and you need a venue.
"If you get two, you'd get the third in line."
Fergal O'Brien realistic over what the future holds
The World Snooker Tour is certainly not opposed to the tour visiting the island twice in the season, with the current Northern Ireland Open set to continue, and the possibility of a return of the Irish Masters in the coming years.
"We love the fans in Ireland and we have staged some fantastic tournaments there in past," a spokesperson for WST said.
"We are always looking at opportunities for new tournaments."
If Goffs, as Murphy suggests, is too small to host the modern 128-player events, where might it go instead?
There are various suggested venues, from the Convention Centre in Dublin, to one of the venues that's been used before.
The waiting game goes on for now but maybe, with a lot of the best young players coming from that city, Cork could be the ideal location if a professional snooker tournament was to return to Ireland.
While we wait for that to happen, Belfast continues to do an excellent job, with crowds last week evidence of the interest the game still has on this island.
